Andre Stafford isn’t sure whether campaigning with President Donald Trump in Cobb County on Wednesday will help Rick Jackson gain support from Black voters in his general election matchup against Keisha Lance Bottoms, but he hopes it does.
“The polls are showing the president’s approval rating isn’t at an all-time high, so attaching yourself to the hip … would not be a smart decision,” said Stafford, the Black Republican state House candidate taking on District 42 incumbent Gabriel Sanchez. Stafford described the president as a “charismatic,” yet “polarizing figure.”
“I see Black women going 98% for Keisha in the governor’s race, but I think Black men will be split,” he said Thursday morning after his trip to Wheeler High School in Marietta. “Trump does well with the Black men vote. If history repeats itself, it would help.”
Stafford was one of about 200 people chosen by White House staffers to sit behind the lectern inside the high school gymnasium in Marietta, giving him a close view of Trump and Jackson shaking hands before addressing thousands of people in attendance while hundreds of anti-Trump demonstrators protested outside.
Stafford said the president’s appearance was necessary to unite a fractured Georgia GOP after a heated and divisive primary election between Jackson and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.
“The energy when they both were on the stage was quite legendary,” Stafford said of Trump and Jackson.
Trump’s visit to metro Atlanta was his first since Jackson and U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins won their primary runoffs. Georgia Republicans hope the stop will give all of the party’s statewide office candidates a boost with Black and working-class voters who have soured on the president since 2024, largely due to economic concerns.
Many Black federal workers lost their jobs due to Trump’s layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency. Thousands have been kicked off Medicaid, Housing and Urban Development rental assistance, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in conjunction with the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. More have struggled to pay higher gas and grocery prices as a result of Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran.
Trump, Jackson and other candidates spent the afternoon promoting some of the president’s more-popular economic policies, including No Tax On Tips. Party leaders also promoted the president’s Trump Accounts program. Launched in January, Trump Accounts lets qualifying American parents receive $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury if they open an investment account for their children, who can use the compounding gains to pay for college, buy a home, or invest in their future in other ways once they turn 18.
The program is one of Trump’s strategies to restore faith in the American dream at a time when many Americans have grown skeptical it still exists. Jackson told attendees the program reminded him of the $100 he received as a Christmas present from an anonymous donor as a foster child growing up in Techwood Homes. He vowed to push Georgia lawmakers to match the federal government’s commitment to the Trump Accounts program if he’s elected governor.
“I believe our legislature will approve that,” Jackson said. “If they don’t, I will personally donate it myself.”
(Chauncey Alcorn/Capital B)
Many Black Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 fondly remember receiving a Trump-endorsed stimulus check from the federal government during the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Three-time Trump voter Kimberly Wakefield said she wasn’t sure whether Trump Accounts will help the party maintain the gains with Black voters it made in 2024.
“On one level, I think that Trump should just sit back and let the opposite party show people what they’re made of,” Wakefield told Capital B Atlanta. “I think [Trump Accounts] is huge and it doesn’t matter what your skin color is. … Whether it’s going to cause people to want to vote for Rick Jackson or not, that remains to be seen.”
Trump, Jackson, and other candidates who spoke Wednesday suggested electing Bottoms and Ossoff would allow communism to take hold in Georgia, pointing to the recent electoral wins Democratic Socialists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have secured across the country.
Trump didn’t mention Bottoms by name, but took multiple direct shots at Ossoff.
“Jon Ossoff and the Democrat communists want to let the Marxists into power, bankrupt your families, and leave you totally undefended with wide-open borders,” Trump said. “But we will not let that happen to our country.”
Bottoms’ campaign saw Trump’s stumping with Jackson and the rest of the Republican ticket on Wednesday as a sign of desperation. Two of the latest polls on the race for Georgia governor show the former Atlanta mayor with a 5 to 7 percentage point lead over the billionaire healthcare mogul.
“Rick Jackson and his allies are clearly getting desperate, and they will say anything to distract from the fact that Jackson has endorsed every part of Donald Trump’s chaotic agenda that is hurting Georgia families,” Bottoms campaign spokesperson La’Keitha Carlos told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday.
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